The invention relates to packet processing in a parallel processing environment.
Packets of information that are to be received, processed, and transmitted by an integrated circuit are often scheduled using a scheduling algorithm. Some scheduling algorithms use a priority associated with each packet of information when scheduling the packet. An information packet or portion of the packet may be added to a priority queue upon packet receipt by the integrated circuit, and the received information packet may have an associated priority. The information packet or portion of the packet having the highest priority may be removed from the priority queue for transmission from the integrated circuit. One way of maintaining a priority queue for scheduling information packets involves using an associative array that maps each priority to a list of packets having that priority.